24 thoughts on “The Trayvon Case Unravels”

  1. I haven’t been paying much attention to this case, but, normally, when prosecutors bring racially-charged cases in response not to the initial police report, but to public pressure, the cases don’t go well for the prosecution. E.g., Bernie Goetz, Rodney King, the Duke lacrosse team. So I wouldn’t be surprised is this one ended in acquittal.

    That’s why we have juries, to ensure that public pressure does not lead to punishing people who are not proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

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  4. This is a helpful collection of materials:

    http://mypetjawa.mu.nu/archives/216417.php

    1. There’s a 15-minute on-scene video reenactment that Zimmerman did for the police the day after the shooting, explaining pretty much every step that he took, his interactions with the police dispatcher, witnesses and the police. I had never seen Zimmerman on video before. I knew he was not a huge guy, but I was surprised by how mild-mannered he was in the video. There’s no machismo in his attitude. (I don’t think Zimmerman had a lawyer at that point.)

    2. There’s a surveillance film from the 7-11 showing that Trayvon Martin was a tall guy–he dwarfs the adult convenience store worker. (According to Wikipedia, Martin was 4 inches taller than Zimmerman, but 27 pounds lighter.)

    3. Most interestingly, the blogger provides a map of the routes taken by Zimmerman and Martin. If Jeantel is to be believed that Martin said that he was in his dad’s backyard, he had to have doubled back in order to wind up at the scene of the shooting. Of course, Jeantel might have misunderstood him.

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  5. I suspect he is likely to get off, but I think the fact that there was a trial is a very good thing. What the jury does is secondary. If a grown man can shoot an unarmed teenager after following that teenager and not have to explain himself to a jury, that’s basically the end of any idea of law and order as a public good.

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  6. I disagree. I think it’s unethical for prosecutors to bring cases that they don’t expect to win, and I suspect this is such a case.

    My comments are subject to the caveat that I haven’t followed the Trayvon Martin case very closely. But the Bernie Goetz case, which I did follow, was one that the prosecutor could not have expected to win (the grand jury initially refused to indict), so I think it was unethical to have brought it.

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    1. By that standard, it would be unethical for a prosecutor to have charged anybody not black with killing a black person in most of the country until well after I was born.

      You’re continued mentioning of Goetz is doing an injustice to Martin and you’re caveat is an absurd dodge. Goetz was trapped on a subway by four men who initiated the incident and demanded money from him. There is nothing in that fact pattern that fits with even the most pro-Zimmerman interpretation of this incident. The only reason Goetz gets mentioned is a deliberate attempt to defend Zimmerman by clouding the water. I keep guns. I’ve been around them my whole life. That Zimmerman wasn’t prosecuted without political pressure scares me far more than gun control. Stand your ground is an absurd law and Zimmerman didn’t even meet that loose standard.

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      1. Yesterday, I visited a couple of cemeteries (including the gorgeous Green-Wood Cemetery) in Brooklyn with my uncles. We drove from Green-Wood to Cemetery of the Holy Cross in what I guess is the Flatbush area. My uncles were joking uncomfortably about the sketchy neighborhoods I was driving them through (never mind that on my mother’s side, her family’s cemetery is in East New York and is locked because of the high potential of vandalism; IOW, this was hardly the most dangerous part of Brooklyn). And I didn’t say anything because in person I’m a big old softie and nonconfrontational. 🙂 But I wanted to say “Yes, there are black people. In Brooklyn. Shopping and walking around on Flatbush Avenue on a Sunday afternoon. Get over it.” And that was Zimmerman’s problem. He saw a black male and thought “Sketchy!” And he put these events into motion through a bunch of unacceptable actions inspired by his initial inability to see a black male as someone who was simply walking by and going about his life. Maybe the justice system isn’t the best place to question Zimmerman’s actions, but they need to be questioned somewhere, somehow. We can’t continue as a society this way.

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  7. “Stand your ground is an absurd law and Zimmerman didn’t even meet that loose standard.”

    Stand your ground isn’t relevant to the circumstances of the case, if we accept that Zimmerman was on the ground having his head pounded onto the sidewalk and had no possibility of escape when he fired the fatal shot.

    The media has been very misleading about Stand Your Ground and it’s involvement with the Zimmerman case, just as it as been misleading about other aspects of the case.

    http://reason.com/archives/2013/06/26/george-zimmermans-excuse

    http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/08/no-stand-your-ground-defense-for-george-zimmerman/261157/

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  8. What do you mean, an absurd dodge? The blogosphere would collapse if people only commented on things they knew a lot about. Your rudeness is poison poured in the well of civil discourse.

    But please, explain yourself. If a prosecutor doesn’t believe, after careful investigation, that twelve of his or her fellow citizens will find the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, what justifies him or her in bringing a case? It seems to me a waste of judicial resources, an abuse of state power, and a manifest unfairness to the defendant, whose life is disrupted even though the community agrees that he has done nothing wrong. By the same token, I disapprove of the police maintaining public order by arresting people on charges that they know won’t stick, holding them overnight, and then letting the charges be dismissed later. If the executive itself doesn’t believe that you are guilty, you shouldn’t be haled into court.

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    1. There is a vast chasm between “not believing a jury will find guilty” and “not believing somebody is guilty.” A prosecutor is unethical in the later case, but not the former case. If a prosecutor thinks somebody is guilty and that the jury won’t convict, trying harder is a perfectly reasonable option.

      ABA ethnics standards say prosecutors should only be sure the charge is supported probable cause.

      And my rudeness is limited to you and the Ghana-guy.

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  9. Ack. No fighting, guys. Ignore each other, please. I can only pop in here sporatically, until I get Ian in camp, so I really can’t mediate.

    I think Zimmerman’s going to get off, but I do think he definitely did something. He went out of his way to follow a kid, even when cops told him to back off. He put himself into a situation where there would be a fight. Just because you’re in a fist fight, it doesn’t mean that you are allowed to whip out your gun and shoot the other guy, especially if the other guy doesn’t have a gun.

    That poor, poor girl on the witness stand. I know it’s the defense’s job to destroy the credibility of witnesses, but she made it so easy for him. She was so out of her depth. Wanted to protect her from all that.

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  10. Some very brief research indicates that Laura is correct as to the law in New York (where deadly force may only be used to resist deadly force), but not in Florida (where deadly force may be used to resist any felony, which presumably would include assault). So, for instance, it would seem that in Florida, you may annoy someone verbally, or in some other non-criminal fashion, and, if he responds with physical assault, you can shoot him.

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    1. And if you’re the only witness to the shooting, who’s to gainsay your account of what happened? I can’t imagine what could possibly go wrong with laws like that.

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      1. If there are truly no witnesses and no other evidence, I guess in New York the killer claims the other guy was threatening him with deadly force (like bashing his head with a rock, or stabbing him in the eye with a pen), and he walks. That doesn’t seem like a real life issue, though.

        But suppose a 250 lb. guy has knocked your wife down and is kicking her in the ribs (not deadly!), should you be able to use a gun to stop him? I guess reasonable minds could differ, so we rely on the legislative process to declare the social judgment, and the executive and judiciary to enforce the decision so reached. And federalism, so that the people of New York and Florida can make slightly different decisions. I don’t have a problem with any of that.

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      2. The only part that is well-attested by non-interested parties (or parties with interests counter to the testimony provided) is that Zimmerman was pursuing Martin while carrying a weapon.

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  11. “And if you’re the only witness to the shooting, who’s to gainsay your account of what happened? I can’t imagine what could possibly go wrong with laws like that.”

    We have a presumption of innocence in our system. I think that’s a good thing.

    As I said, look at the 15-minute reenactment. I think it really takes the air out of the prosecution theory that Zimmerman was some sort of Batman wannabe vigilante type. He comes across as very cautious and mild-mannered, the very opposite of a loose cannon.

    Andrew Branca has a blog post up discussing testimony from Sanford PD investigator Chris Serino.

    http://legalinsurrection.com/2013/07/zimmerman-trial-day-6-analysis-video-serino-testimony-challenges-very-foundation-of-states-charge//#more

    “Asked if there was ANYTHING that Zimmerman had said that contradicted the wealth of evidence possessed by Serino, the Investigator answered, “No, sir.” No physical evidence, no witness evidence, no officer statements, nothing? “No, sir.””

    That’s a pretty amazing statement.

    “At one point Serino was pressured to initiate a “challenge meeting” with Zimmerman, in which he would try to goad Zimmerman to making substantive changes to his testimony or to admit to a substantive omission from his prior testimony. The purpose of the “challenge meeting,” it was explained, is to try to break the suspects story and get to the truth. Indeed, the investigator might even pretend that some piece of incriminating evidence existed, or otherwise exaggerate evidence contrary to the suspect’s narrative, to try to find a chink in the suspect’s story.”

    “The trouble, Serino recounted, is that he could really do an effective “challenge meeting” for the simple reason that “I just didn’t have much to challenge him WITH.” In this case, O’Mara asked, you didn’t have much to hit him with? “No sir,” answered Serino, “I did not.””

    “Nevertheless, the “challenge meeting” was held. In the absence of any real contrary evidence with which to challenge Serino, the Investigator pretended to have some ready to spring. They had discovered, he said, video footage of the events that evening. “And what did Zimmerman say when you told him that?” “He said, Thank God,” Serino answered.”

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  12. Bear in mind, there are piles of evidence in this case: there’s the physical layout of the neighborhood, there are Zimmerman’s injuries, there’s the condition of Martin’s body and the ballistics. Zimmerman was on the phone with the dispatcher, Martin was on the phone with Jeantel, there were neighbors, there were police officers, there were EMTs, there’s the 15-minute reenactment, etc. There is a lot of evidence here–it’s not just one guy with a smoking gun claiming self-defence.

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    1. My problem isn’t that the guy has no claim of self-defense. It’s that the guy he killed seems very likely to have had a better claim of self-defense against him.

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      1. I agree with MH.

        Trayvon Martin was walking home, and Zimmerman was threatened by that. That is not rational on Zimmerman’s part.

        Trayvon Martin was being followed by a “creepy-ass cracker” and was threatened by that. That is rational.

        The justice system may not really have any way to address that, and I’m not even sure I want it to (I’m not sure I don’t want it to either; I consider myself underinformed enough to be ambivalent there). But we should never forget that George Zimmerman acted unethically and stupidly, and as a result, a young man died who should never have died. I am afraid that Zimmerman won’t learn the correct lesson from this trial as he seems well on his way to a martyr complex with the support of way too many people in this country.

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      2. Martin’s not on trial, though, is he?

        By the way, I suspect that Jeantel’s evidence (she being the source of the “creepy ass cracker” remark) is not entirely reliable. She says she can hear the sound of grass or sidewalk through a cell phone, which is pretty amazing. She also lied that she had been in the hospital the day of Martin’s funeral, she lied about her age, she didn’t present herself with her evidence until the Martin family’s lawyer had had ample opportunity to coach her, and the letter that she “wrote” turned out not to have been penned by her (as she couldn’t read it, it being in cursive). As I recall, for a long time, she was unwilling to talk to the investigation. Her testimony should not be taken at face value. And even if we did take it at face value, the “creepy ass cracker” remark suggests Martin had a racial and sexual animus toward Zimmerman and gives a motive as to why Martin would have chosen to attack Zimmerman out of the blue (which is Zimmerman’s story).

        I suggest that the reason Jeantel took so long to appear was that the content of her conversation with Martin was very different than what she has presented in court.

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  13. Sanford Police Detective Doris Singleton: Did you, at that time, ever say to him “I’m neighborhood watch”?
    Zimmerman: No.
    Officer Singleton: Did it not occur to you?
    Zimmerman: No, I said, I don’t have a problem. And I started backing away from him
    Officer Singleton: But you kinda did have a problem, that’s why you were following him, you had a concern with him.
    Zimmerman: I was scared …
    Officer Singleton: Too scared to tell him … that you were neighborhood watch? You were afraid to tell him that?
    Zimmerman: Uh, … yes ma’am.
    Officer Singleton: Look, I’m not trying to put you on the spot, but these are the questions people are going to ask and will seek out an answer. It seemed like a perfect opportunity to say “Look I’m neighborhood watch, I don’t recognize you, are you staying here?”
    Zimmerman: Like I said, he came up out of nowhere … so when he popped up, he just caught me off guard, and …
    Officer Singleton: But can you see how that would frighten him? That you had been following him now through the whole park…?

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    1. Who are you talking to? Me? In a previous comment, I said that Zimmerman was guilty of various things.

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